Silas Marner
Silas Marner
In George Elliot?s novel, Silas Marner, the author illustrates three different types
of women through her characters. There is Nancy Lameter-Cass, who concentrates on her
role as a dutiful wife and on her husband?s happiness, her sister Priscilla, unmarried and
managing her father?s farm she has the unconventional role and is an outcast in Ravloe,
and Dolly Winthrop, who plays a good mother figure not only in her own family and to
Eppie but in the community as well.
Nancy Lameter concentrated on Godfrey Cass even before they were married.
Although Nancy tells Priscilla that she never means to be married, she thinks of being the
Squire?s wife, and treasures the dried flowers Godfrey gave her. Now that they are
married she occupies herself with thoughts of Godfrey and his state of mind. Nancy had
one child, but after the infant died, she decided that having no children was harder on
Godfrey than her, “It was very different-it was much harder for a man to be disappointed
in that way: a woman could always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but
a man wanted something that would make him look forward more-and
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